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It's 2024. An older Japanese gentleman wants to watch the International Space Station's closing ceremony, but he can't get out of bed. No problem! All he has to do is call Robear to help him get up. Yes, that's his caregiver's name, but you see, Robear isn't human: it's a bear-like robot. This machine is actually the third and latest iteration of the beary helpful caregiver robot being developed by Japanese research institute Riken. The first model announced in 2009 was called RIBA, followed by RIBA-II in 2011, though Riken also came out with a Pillsbury Doughboy-like model way back in 2006 called RI-MAN. Robear weighs 309 pounds, making it a lot lighter than its 507-pound predecessor. It also has new features that ensure it's gentler and more careful while carrying patients to/from their beds or wheelchairs than the older versions.

Softbank's adorable robot may be short and cute, but it'll still cost the price of a secondhand car to bring one into your home. The Japanese network has revealed that the first Pepper devices on the market will cost just over nine grand to buy. Similar to Google's Glass Explorer project, Softbank will sell the first proper production run of 300 units to developers in the hope that they'll build apps for the automaton.

We get it, the most desirable version of a limited edition PlayStation is up for grabs, and you really want it. Even better, your generous bid will go to charity, improving the lives of children. In the industry, that's referred to as a "win win." Except when it's not. The auction for that #00001 anniversary edition PS4 (that sold for around $127,000) has -- perhaps not unsurprisingly -- fallen through. Sony doesn't detail why, but it's not hard to imagine that a chronic case of buyer's remorse, or an inability to pay could have something to do with it. Sony's still coming good on its side of the deal though, and is making the promised donation (a match of the winning bid) to charity as planned. For those serious bidders that missed out, this could mean a second bite of the cherry. Sony's not saying exactly what it's doing with the console, but for now it's putting it on display at its Ginza location. PS4-fans without the deep pockets can swing by to take a look at it starting this Saturday.

In an alternate universe where up is down and black is white, more feature phones get shipped year-on-year while its replacement, the smartphone, sees sales stall. That's apparently what happened in Japan last year though, according to MM Research Institute. For the first time in seven years, flip-phone shipments grew -- and grew by 5.7 percent to a hard-to-comprehend 10.58 million units. In the same year, smartphones units shipped fell 5.3 percent, down to 27.7 million. Flip-phones still make up a surprisingly large proportion of phone sales in Japan and it's actually the second year in a row that the market research firm has noted a drop in smart device sales. MM Research's Hideaki Yokota told Reuters: "Smartphones are also peaking in terms of functionality and they tend to last a long time as well, so there are fewer renewals."

Now that the independent company's got rid of those pesky excess components, it's time for VAIO to make something new. And it's not a smartphone. Yet. The PC maker has announced two new PCs here in Tokyo: the VAIO Z and VAIO Z Canvas. The latter is actually eventual final version of the prototype tablet that did the rounds last year -- but we'll get to that. First, inside the flagship 13.3-inch VAIO Z which goes up for preorder in Japan later today, you'll find a second -generation high-speed SSD and an unspecified fifth-generation Core i7 processor, all bound up in aluminum-carbon shell. However, bare specs aside, the company reckons its a lot of the little details that matter, and we'll get to those right after the break. %Gallery-slideshow266961%

In the hope of drawing attention to its Androidify app (and the fact that you've been able to make your own for almost four years now), Google programmed 300 devices (and their Android character) to 'sing' (and flail the limbs around, roughly in time, in the middle of a classy shopping center in upscale Omotesando, Tokyo, Japan. Like a bonafide real chorus, the devices were separated out into parts, though we could also pick out a smattering of beatboxing droids too. If you have entirely not enough pride, you could even take a turn as a conductor, with a gesture sensor conveying your hand movements to your Google singing group. For such overtly public shaming, you were rewarded with a free Android t-shirt. The performances will continue through this Valentine Day weekend, and it will all sound a little something like this:

IBM's publicity-loving supercomputer Watson has a new job in Japan for wireless carrier SoftBank doing... something? Its job description is vague so far, but first it'll need to learn Japanese, no small feat for a machine that has remained mostly occidental so far. Watson is first and foremost a cognitive computer designed to parse language and find relationships between huge amounts of data. That means in order to help SoftBank -- which has divisions around the world, including Sprint Nextel in the US -- it'll need to get a better grasp of the language and culture in Japan.

Going to Japan? Here's a bit of advice: if you're absolutely terrified of eerie human-like robots, think very hard before visiting Nagasaki prefecture's Henn-na Hotel that's slated to open its doors in July. Why? Because the high-tech hotel will employ 10 robots, three of which are multilingual gynoids that look like they were shipped straight from Uncanny Valley. Kokoro, the robots' manufacturer, calls them "actroids," and yes, you've seen us feature them in the past. Thankfully, they're stuck behind the check-in counter as receptionists, so you can just get that part done as fast as possible. Or, you can try to flirt for a room upgrade if that's your thing, since they can apparently establish eye contact and respond to body language.

How do you make an iPhone Lightning cable at a tenth of the price of what Apple charges? In short, you can't. Cupertino holds claim to the design patents, not to mention that there's an authenticator chip built into the cable, which means Apple can charge to license out the design (in turn bumping up the cable's base price). However, to avoid such licensing issues, Daiso (arguably the de facto 100-yen/dollar store in Japan) has substantially tweaked the Lightning cable you once knew. This means it's roughly a tenth of the price of the cheapest Apple-certified cable on Amazon, but well, it's also only really half the cable.

During Netflix's last earnings call executives announced plans to reach 200 countries (up from the 50 or so currently served) over the next two years, and now CNBC's Julia Boorstin is hearing that will include Japan by this fall. Hulu actually beat Netflix there back in 2011, but sold off its service to a local broadcaster last year. Currenty, Netflix is active in South America and Europe with a launch in Australia and New Zealand coming next month, but this could be a part of its first push in Asia. Otherwise the company is "exploring modest options" in China, but we expect there should be plenty of places to watch those Marvel series by the time they're all released next year.

Update: And it's official! Netflix has announced plans to launch in Japan this fall. CEO Reed Hastings called the country " a critical component of our plan to connect people around the world to stories they love." To avoid the fate of Hulu and others, Netflix is opening a regional office in Tokyo -- headed by Greg Peters, who joined the company in 2008 -- which will hopefully be enough to secure a satisfactory amount of local content for potential subscribers.

Sony caused quite a stir with the unveiling of the 20th Anniversary Edition PlayStation 4, and gamers fell over themselves to get their hands on one of 12,300 pieces of gaming nostalgia. Those online sales and promotional '80s stores have now closed, but the company isn't finished yet. It's just put up the most collectable PlayStation 4 of all for auction and is now taking bids for the first 20th Anniversary Edition PS4 ever made -- the one that carries the coveted 00001/12300 plate.

In Japan, people still use feature phones. But despite the smartphone revolution, dumb phone innovation is not dead. Not when a phone can magically, (Transformer-ly) convert from a heart shape into something approaching a chubby handset you can actually talk into. Imaginatively titled "Heart", it'll come to Nihon in both red and black options, and according to our Japan team, weighs a mere 54 grams. Curiously, it doesn't launch until after Valentines' Day (late March), but when it does arrive, the phone will also come with in a special Sailor Moon iteration, with magical wand dangly accessory and livery. %Gallery-slideshow261693%

Japanese carrier au by KDDI has been creating tech-as-art for well over a decade with its Infobar line of phones. After starting with a stylish-but-dumb cameraphone in 2003, the brand began offering fully-fledged smartphones with the A01 back in 2011. It's now back with the third iteration of the A series, the A03, and it's as pretty as ever.

Industrial design for the latest Infobar comes from minimalist product designer Naoto Fukasawa, who has worked on the range since its inception, and also created Muji's wall-mounted CD player, part of the MoMA's permanent collection. After the uncharacteristically bland A02, the A03 returns to Infobar's more colorful roots. Encased in anodized aluminum, the A03 has a 4.5-inch 1080p display, 13-megapixel camera, 16GB of storage (expandable with microSD) and capacitive keys for navigation. It's available in a number of hues, but our favorite is undoubtably "nishikigoi," the koi-inspired coloring that Infobar is famous for.

Happy New Year. And when it comes to shopping in Japan, that means sales and fukubukuro. These "lucky bags" are sold by all kinds of stores, and typically contain products equal in value to what you pay, but sometimes a whole lot more. Even Apple's bricks-and-mortar stores have followed the tradition since 2004, with a handful of bags housing a coveted MacBook Air. All of the bags cost 35,000 yen, roughly $300, but if you're shopping for an Apple laptop, it's a gamble. There's no guarantee what will be inside yours. This year, for the first time, Apple has added a handful of limited edition products for its crowd of dedicated Japanese fans. We visited the store in Ginza, Tokyo, today, which alone (there are three stores in the city) managed to attract 900 people before the store even opened. Let's see what 300 bucks can buy, if you're willing to risk it. %Gallery-slideshow255898%

It's been about ten months since the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange turned out the lights, blaming hackers or a bug in the blockchain as reasons why 850,000 bitcoin it held had suddenly disappeared. Today the Japanese paper Yomiuri Shinbun (English) reports that Tokyo Police investigating the events have found evidence that only about one percent of the lost bitcoins disappeared due to hacking from outsiders. Citing sources inside the department, the report suggests that the rest of the 650,000 bitcoins still unaccounted for (200k popped up unexpectedly) were lost by "unauthorized operation" of the system. The evidence shows unauthorized transactions by someone that did not correspond to any customer accounts. There's no indication of who exactly was responsible, but former CEO Mark Karpeles told PC World via email that he will "continue investigating" to find out what really happened. Maybe North Korea could help?

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bitcoinjapanMarkKarpelesmt.goxMtGoxThu, 01 Jan 2015 00:23:00 -050021|21123284http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/12/16/onigiri-mmo-coming-to-consoles-next-year/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Massively&ncid=rss_semi
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The Japanese mythology MMO, Onigiri, is officially on its way to the Xbox One (and PlayStation 4) next year in North America and Europe, Windows Central reports. The title, which is developed by Cyberstep, will be free-to-play and is already live on the Xbox One in Japan.

Onigiri came out on the PC in 2013. The console version may have patches slightly lagging behind the PC version, but it will otherwise be identical in form and function. There will be no cross-over play between platforms.

NTT DoCoMo's LTE is so fast that ordinary life can seem slow by comparison. That's why the company's latest bizarre advert is showing you how to make a dinner of battered shrimp in under three seconds. All you'll need is an air cannon, some flour, batter and an open flame, as well as the mechanism to spray all three into the air. Then, just firing the creatures through each one will produce some tasty-looking, if microbiologically-unsound fare. Something, something, buy some LTE?

Softbank's Pepper, the robot with a line in cheesy jokes, hand gestures and oddly expressive poses is branching out from offering awkward banter to smartphone shoppers . Now, ahead of going on sale early next year for roughly $2,000, it's looking to help sell coffee machines in department stores like Bic Camera across Japan. A Nescafe spokesperson told CNET Japanthat the robot will be able to bore you reel off the special qualities of Nescafe's capsule machines, as well as offer up quizzes and games -- presumably to distract younger, less caffeine-focused shoppers. It's just a shame it's not hooking up with a Poursteady just yet.

There are playmats where you build the roads in seconds, a ballpit where the balls are as big as you, and a drawing-board where your doodles come to life. This is Team Lab's "Theme Park of the Future" .. but it isn't really a theme park. It's an attempt to bring projection mapping, motion gestures into contact with fundamental playtime activities -- and even expand on kids' creativity. You just need a handful of projectors, some giant walls, and a scanner or two. %Gallery-slideshow247581%

If you love lattes but wish the foam could somehow be more adorable, good news! You'll soon be able to sculpt the most cloyingly cute animals you want using the Awa Taccino, a gun that fires measured dollops of foamed low-fat or soy milk. You just need to add the milk, whip it up for a minute with the supplied battery powered blender, sculpt it into shape and add chocolate features (as shown in the amazingly Japanese video below). You'll notice I said "sculpt": it does seem to require a modicum of skill, so for $60 you may end up with "formless blob" lattes instead of kitteh or panda lattes. It'll arrive at the Japan Trend Shop next month.

It's not like we haven't seen e-ink watches before, but we've never seen one quite like this. FES Watch uses e-paper not only for its face, but its entire strap, allowing the wearer to change its design with a simple button press. By combining different upper- and lower-strap choices with a variety of face designs, you'll have a total of 24 designs to choose from. This isn't a smartwatch (it won't do anything other than tell you the time and date), but thanks to that fact, it'll last around two months on a single charge.

The name "Toshiba" conjures images of stacks of laptops piled high and maybe the occasional television, but the Japanese electronics giant is turning its attention to something just a little more humble: lettuce. Well, spinach too. And swiss chard. Quartz's Dan Frommer tells the tale of a Toshiba-owned clean room nestled in the industrial corners of Yokosuka where people clad in special suits dutifully plant seeds and plop them on tall racks under an array of fluorescent lights. The end result? Tasty veggies that you won't need to wash (though if you're a mild hypochondriac like your author, you'd probably give 'em a quick rinse anyway).

Elon Musk may be terrified of self-controlling robots, but the retail industry is clearly hoping they'll save cash in the long term. Nestle, for instance, has purchased 20 copies of Softbank's Pepper robot as the new spokes-droid for its food business in Japan. If successful, then the food manufacturer could have up to 1,000 of the cute yet disturbing devices pimping Nestle vending machines across the country. It's not just limited to robot-friendly Japan, either, since Lowe's has announced that it's hired a robotic employee to help customers find stock in its San Jose Orchard Supply store. The OSHBot comes with a pair of displays, one to bombard you with offers and another to let you video conference with an in-store expert hiding in the back. That said, it's hard not to be concerned for all of the workers who could be handed a pink slip in favor of the Terminator's doe-eyed cousin.

A team from the University of Tokyo is putting their own spin on a touchscreen. By combining an infrared sensor with ultrasound technology, the group of researches have managed to design a virtual display that's as thin as air and can let you feel every object you're touching. Dubbed HaptoMime, the project uses a reflective surface to give you that physically tangible feeling, while a change in ultrasonic pressure make it possible to create a number of different sensations -- say you're playing a digital keyboard (like the one pictured above), the feedback from it isn't the same you get with other type of applications. Check out the HaptoMime holographic screen in action after the break.